Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Fire Underwriters Association of the Northwest Volume 23 (1892) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1892 Excerpt: ...may not adjudge us so much in wrong motives as wrong impression and education. The efforts of the leading old-line companies to acquaint the public with their merits have been chiefly confined to calendars and blotters furnished agents, and with so little success that, outside of active business men, they have become almost hopelessly confounded with irresponsible competitors. Other business of approaching magnitude and public concern has been advertised so thoroughly that an intelligent foreigner residing here but one year can, without apparent effort, tell you something of the principal railroad, bank, and life insurance interests of our country; yet the average citizen, though native born, cannot tell what fire company protects his property. He simply knows agent Blank represents it. This seems most singular when we consider that the number of companies, good and bad, engaged in fire underwriting in the United States, greatly exceeds that of all other nations in the world combined. The almost numberless companies here, present a variety of grades of indemnity, so often questionable as to constitute a condition of the business that would seem to render it imperative for the people to be posted as to the kind and character of the company engaged, but to which, in a general way, they are quite indifferent. Very little, comparatively, has ever been written upon the subject, presumably because the people are so little interested in it. Newspaper men are shrewd enough to endeavor to entertain the public with what it most demands. It is quite natural, therefore, that their attention, when given us, should be in harmony with the irresistible movement of malice or misunderstanding. If reference is made to a contested claim, the companies are advised to pay; if to...